by Jack Wilder
Two of the dead men wore belts, and Cervantes knelt to unbuckle one, keeping an eye and his pistol trained on Stone. While Cervantes’ attention flickered to his attempts to free the belts, Stone fished the small knife out of his pocket and stuffed it into his combat boot. Cervantes wrapped one belt around Stone’s midsection and pulled it tight, pinioning his arms against his sides and his body to the chair. The other belt went around his wrists, binding them together. It was sloppy, but effective. It wouldn’t hold him long, but it would slow him down enough now that Cervantes had more of an upper-hand.
“And now, I kill you slowly. Before dat, I tink I fuck your girlfriend while you watch.” Cervantes went to the closed door that led into the shanty-maze. Stone felt panic turn his blood to ice as Cervantes strode into the next room.
A moment later, Cervantes screamed, “Where da fuck she go?”
Hope swelled in Stone’s belly, but he kept his expression neutral as Cervantes stormed past him.
Stone scanned the room. Each of the dead men had had a gun of some sort. But now, upon closer examination, he realized there were only two firearms left.
17
Wren held the heavy gun in both hands as she tiptoed through the darkness. Every sound startled her, forced her to fight to keep her breathing quiet and her step light.
She’d heard several gunshots, and then silence. She’d emerged from the darkened room expecting to find Cervantes waiting or Stone dead. Instead, she found three men with holes in their head, the accuracy a trademark of Stone’s skill. She’d snatched the first weapon she saw, a blocky, black thing sitting on the table. It was heavier than it looked, and merely holding it made her shiver in terror at the thought of using it. She’d never fired a pistol before. She’d used a rifle once, with her father, and a shotgun a few times with Jon, out in the Virginia countryside. They’d only shot at targets. This was for real.
The part that scared her, more than holding the gun, more than being naked and alone in the darkness, more than knowing Cervantes and his men were somewhere close by, looking for her, was the knowledge that she was absolutely prepared to pull the trigger, if she got Cervantes in her sights. As prepared as she could be, at any rate.
A gunshot from off to her left. Wren huddled against a wall until a second shot rang, and then silence. Her toes touched some kind of fabric, and she felt around with her hands, the dim light revealing only vague shapes. A blanket. Something hard underneath it. Cold flesh. A leg. Alive? Dead? She couldn’t tell. She followed the leg up to hard ribs, felt a faint heartbeat, thready and slow. Pulling away the blankets, she found a small pile of clothing, what felt to her touch like a minidress of some kind. She found the opening and pulled it on, tugged it on. It was far too small, constricting her chest and not even completely covering her ass, but it was better than being naked. She tugged it down farther, feeling her breasts squeeze up and out of the too-small bodice, and her backside hanging out beneath. She wished for proper clothing, knowing she wouldn’t find it here.
Her violated privates throbbed, ached, and that only fueled her rage. It was cruelty for the sake of cruelty, inflicting agony simply for the joy of hurting someone else.
Wren had had enough.
She turned around and went toward the direction where she’d last heard gunfire. She crept through the darkness, straining her ears.
“Where da fuck she go?” Cervantes, discovering her absence. He wasn’t far away, and was moving toward her.
Wren spun in place, found a corner, and crouched in it, making herself as small as she could. Feet scraped on dirt, a darker shadow filled the doorway to her left.
“I know you’re here somewhere, little bird,” Cervantes said. “Give up, and I may let your man live. He gonna bleed out soon. You can help him.”
Wren didn’t breathe, didn’t move. Cervantes moved on, into another room. She slid into the doorway he’d come through, following the bluish-white light of the lantern. She had to save Stone. She knew better than to believe Cervantes would let either of them go, at this point.
The shadows grew lighter as she moved toward the lit room. Looking down, she could see her dress was jade green, and didn’t do anything to hide her body. It displayed it, if anything. Which was the point, really, she supposed. Her heartbeat ratcheted into a pounding crescendo, her gut roiled, but she kept going. She couldn’t afford to let her fear stop her now. Stone was just through that door. She knew it.
She saw him, then. He was covered in blood. His thigh was gushing crimson, his face and shoulders were crusted with dried blood from a gash on his head, and the wound on his side had reopened. Knotted belts tied him to a chair, and he thrashed, struggling against them, trying to wiggle loose.
“Stone…” She stepped into the room, the same room she’d come from, with the dead men and the drugs, and realized she had gone in a very short circle.
Four rooms, all connected at two walls. Which meant…
“Stupid. Think you get away?” Cervantes, behind her. “I like da dress on you. It fit you much better dan ugly little Liesel. You gonna make me a lotta money, I tink. Come here, or I shoot you, and him.”
Wren was facing away from him, and had the gun in front of her, so she didn’t think he’d seen it yet. Stone was still wiggling, less noticeably though. She could tell he had his hands free, and was reaching for his boot. Something hidden in his boot, she thought. She had to buy time. Stone’s eyes were grim, hard, desperate.
She wanted to tell him she loved him. Maybe it was just the danger speaking, the memory of incredible sex. She didn’t know, or care. He’d come for her, and now she had to give him time to make a play.
She turned around, lifting the gun, planting her feet in a wide triangle, holding the heavy pistol in both hands. She didn’t try to aim it, just pointed the barrel at Cervantes. He looked shocked, his own gun held down at his side.
“Put it down, little bird. You ain’t gonna shoot nobody.” Cervantes slowly lifted his pistol, never taking his eyes from her.
“Shoot him, Wren.” Stone’s voice, low and calm.
“You won’t, Wren.” Cervantes laughed. “Funny, I call you ‘little bird’ all da time, and you really are a little bird. Put it down, I won’t kill him. I sell you to a nice guy.”
That was the wrong thing to say.
BLAM! Cervantes stumbled backward, a hole in his chest blooming scarlet.
Wren remembered timeless time in a dark hole, needles in her skin. BLAM! Fingers touching and pinching, fists hitting, feet kicking in her ribs. BLAM! Eyes, hungry eyes. Girls, naked and starving and drug-addled. Miguel, with his knife and brutal hands and killer’s eyes. BLAM!BLAMBLAM! She advanced a step, toward Cervantes, who looked stunned, staring at her as multiple holes opened in his chest and poured his blood down his chest. She raised the gun slightly. BLAMBLAMBLAM! She remembered being bartered for, sold, like produce. Hungry, scared, hurt, exhausted, drug-addicted. BLAM! The folding silver knife he liked so much, jammed inside her. BLAM! She pulled the trigger twice, but the gun only fired once, clicking empty on the second pull.
Stone was beside her. “You got him.” He pulled the gun from her hand. “He’s dead, babe.” He hopped closer to her, tossed the empty pistol onto the table.
Wren couldn’t take her eyes from Cervantes, his chest a mess of red. His eyes were glazed and shifting, his mouth working like a fish out of water. “He’s not dead.”
“He will be.”
Nausea hit her like a fist. She’d just killed a man. She’d pulled the trigger, fired bullets into him. “I killed him.” Acid burned her throat, and her stomach rebelled, lurched, and puke jetted from her in wave after wave.
Stone held her as she vomited. When she finally stopped, her stomach still lurching and dry-heaving, he pulled her against his chest. He was balanced on one leg. “I know, babe. You had to. He deserved it. I know that doesn’t really help right now, though.”
She felt tears start, and blinked them away. “I…oh God. Oh God, I
killed him.” She looked up at Stone, whose eyes were soft with sympathy. “Does it…how will I ever sleep again?”
Stone pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Time. Therapy, maybe. You’ll have bad dreams, but…with everything you’ve been through, I think that was a given.” He looked down at her, looking her over for fresh injuries. “Are you hurt anywhere? Did he hurt you?”
Wren nodded against his chest. “He…God, oh God. He hurt me. Inside. With the handle of his knife.” She didn’t know how to say it, how to make him understand that the knowledge of what he’d done was almost as bad as the pain of it. “He used that knife, the flippy thing—”
“A balisong. Butterfly knife.” His voice was hesitant, as if he understood what she was getting at but didn’t want to believe it. “What did he do to you?”
She closed her eyes tight, clutched his shirt. “He used it…shoved it in—inside—inside me. It hurts. I think he cut me open, in there.”
“Shit.” He spoke through grinding teeth.
“I know—I know it’s better than being raped, or sold, but…I tried to stop him, I fought him, but he…fuck.” She sobbed, went limp into his arms. “It hurts. I feel it, over and over. That cold hard thing, edges, forced into me. Scraping, cutting. It was closed, but it still…it hurts.”
Stone was silent, his arms tight, almost too tight. Then, he swayed. “I…I gotta stop this bleeding.” He stumbled backward, back into the chair he’d been tied to.
She watched as Stone leaned forward and used his knife to cut away the shirt from one of the dead men, folded the cotton lengthwise into a bandage and wrapped it around his thigh, then tied it in a knot. He cursed under his breath the whole time, a constant stream of florid expressions. Next, he wrapped one of the belts he’d been tied up with around his thigh, over the shirt, and cinched it as tight as it would go, just above the wound. When he had it pulled tight, he slipped the bitter end of the belt between his leg and the leather, leaving a loop through which he passed the end again, creating a makeshift knot. When he was done with this, he was sweating and out of breath.
“We have to move. Get back to the Embassy.”
“But he’s…he’s dead.”
“His goons don’t know that yet. We might still run into trouble. Plus, with Cervantes out of the picture, there’ll be a power vacuum, and a fight to fill it. We don’t want to be around when that shit goes down.”
“Power vacuum?” Wren asked. She felt limp, numb, shocked, unable to process thoughts or emotions.
Stone worked himself to his feet, hopping on his good leg to stay balanced. “He was the big dog in Manila. Now he’s gone, and someone else is going to want to take his place, and it’ll mean an underground war in the process. Don’t worry about it. Our only concern is getting home.”
Wren slid under his arm and took as much of his weight as she could. “Home. I want…I want to go home.” She tried to summon thoughts of home, but nothing came.
She had trouble remembering what her dorm room looked like. Had she ever sat in a classroom, listened to lectures? Sipped coffee and laughed with friends? Gone to sorority parties and had too much cheap beer? She had memories of those things, but they felt more like a movie watched in years past, snapshots and vague notions of things that had happened. It felt like she’d been in Manila forever. Like the person she’d been was gone, and someone else had taken that place. She was still Wren Morgan, still had the same brain and body and soul, but the fabric and substance and content of who she was had been irrevocably altered.
They emerged onto the narrow street in the dim gray of onrushing dawn. Stone peered around, twisting awkwardly to try and find some visual cue as to where they were. He must have seen something he recognized behind them, because he laboriously twisted around and began limping in that direction. He couldn’t put much weight on his leg, but Wren was simply not strong enough to support his weight, so he had to hop.
It would be a long walk back to the Embassy.
18
It seemed almost anticlimactic, in a way. The last several days of chase, hunting for Wren, rescuing her, fleeing Cervantes and his men, only to have it all end with a few bullets in a back room. Now they were adrift in Manila again, alone, and still hurt, still hungry, still exhausted. More so than ever. The question remained, though: were Cervantes’ men still after them? Stone didn’t dare relax his guard, didn’t dare take even a single moment to relax until he knew they were safe.
And the streets of urban Manila were anything but safe, even under the best of circumstances.
It took over two hours for them to find their way to a major road, where they happened upon a taxi disgorging a young couple. Stone pushed Wren into a hustle, hobbling after her, putting more weight on his leg than was really advisable. Wren slid across the ripped upholstery, holding on to Stone’s hand as he clutched the roof of the car and lowered himself in.
The cabbie turned his head slightly, the international unspoken gesture meaning “where to?”
“The US Embassy, please,” Stone said.
“No, no,” the cabby said. “I don’ go dat par. Only Pasay City. Tapt Abenue? LRT EDSA? Go nort’, get dere easy-easy.”
Stone had to work through the scruffy, gray-bearded old man’s thick accent. Tapt? Taft, Taft Avenue. A pretty major thoroughfare in the Pasay City area, and one that would take them, as the man had said, pretty close to the embassy. “That’s fine,” Stone said. “Take us to the station, then.”
“Okay-okay. Comin’ up, quick. Not par.” He slewed the wheel to the right and into traffic, cutting off a rumbling old half-ton truck.
Wren clutched Stone’s hand with panicked strength as the cabby swung the car through traffic, stopping with inches to spare between their car and the one ahead of them, jamming the accelerator so hard the car jolted forward, slamming them both into the seat. After a few minutes of this, the traffic congealed to a standstill, and their forward progress was halted. A raised roadway or train platform ran between the north and south traffic, and through the cracked-open windows Stone could hear the incessant honks of cars, the squeal of brakes and the rumble of diesel engines, motorcycles buzzing, voices raised above the din, a traffic policeman’s whistle shrilling. He found his eyes growing heavy, despite the throbbing in his leg and the constant ache in his side.
Stone rolled down the window farther and sucked in deep breath of the humid air, hot already despite the early morning hour. Beside him, Wren rubbed her eyes.
“I can’t keep going much longer,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been awake and running for a week straight. I don’t even know what day it is, or the last time I ate something. I’m dizzy, and shaky.”
Stone fought a yawn and pulled her shoulder against his side, wrapping his arm around her. “I know, baby. I know. Me too. We’re almost there. A train ride, and we’re there. Stay with me, okay?”
She nodded, jerking as the cabby rocketed the car forward, slipping between two buses and a jeepney to cut through to the far right lane. “I’m with you.” She blinked hard, then sat up, shaking her head as if to shake away sleepiness. “Will anyone else come after us?”
Stone could only shrug.
A few more minutes of start-stop-start-stop, and the cabby jerked the wheel to bring them to the curb. “Out here, station across street.”
Stone dug the correct amount in Pesos out of his pocket, along with a tip, and then shoved the door open and hopped away from the car, balanced on one foot. He extended a hand to help Wren out.
MRT Taft was a madhouse. Even MRT Shaw in all its insanity couldn’t compete with the sheer crush of humanity flooding into and out of the Taft transit station. People flowed in every direction, holding briefcases over their heads, lugging babies on their backs, bags of groceries in their hands, moving in ones and twos and larger groups. A voice squawked in distorted Filipino over the PA, then again in what sounded like barely intelligible English, announcing arrivals and warnings to stay away from the tracks. A set of stairs
led up to the platform, and a sluggish knot of people were traffic-jammed around this stairway, arrivals and departures mixing until there was simply no way to move, except with the mass of bodies.
Stone felt his stomach drop at the sight of what he had to navigate, with a reopened bullet hole in his side and another fresh one in his thigh, a gash on his head and a mouth that hadn’t tasted water in hours and an empty stomach. He’d be elbowed, his leg bumped and kicked, and it would take forever to get into the station.
“Let’s get this over with,” he sighed, adjusting his grip on Wren’s shoulders, forcing himself to use his injured leg as much possible to save the strength in his good one.
Together they entered the press of travelers waiting to ascend to the elevated train station. Within minutes, Stone had been elbowed or bumped so many times he was sure his wounds would be bleeding again, but there was nothing he could do, except deal with it and hope.
Getting up the stairs was hell. He had to use his wounded leg to push up, and nearly screamed with the pain of the effort at each step. Behind him, people were shouting their frustration at his torturous progress. Wren set her shoulder under his armpit and helped him lift up to each step, groaning and using every ounce of strength she had.
It took them nearly ten minutes to ascend the steps. They found a pillar and Stone slumped down to his ass, heedless of the stares he drew. He spotted a vending machine across the station, and pointed to it, handing Wren the last of his Philippines Pesos. “Get us some water, huh?”
She returned after a moment with two liter-bottles of water, and a panicked expression. “I think there’s someone here looking for us. I think I recognized him from the first place Cervantes held me. He was looking around like he was waiting for someone.”